July Talk

At the time of writing this (full disclosure: Well before this posting date), I thought July Talk was something I was late on. When I try to talk to people about this band though, I find a lot of people still haven’t heard of them. This puts today’s post in a weird zone outside of my regularly obscure or nostalgic categories, and instead places it into a sheer fandom for something new.

I first heard July Talk on the radio, I had missed the name but had no doubt in my mind that it was a song by a female vocalist that Tom Waits was featured on. I was ecstatic and rushed home to google any recent songs Tom Waits was featured on. Of course I couldn't find the song, but a few weeks later my sister recommended July Talk and my mind exploded. Instead of a whiskey soaked curmudgeon covered in cigarette ash, there stood a young clean cut rocker, indistinguishable from any other hipster band lead.

I bought the album and found that the singles released were definitely the highlights of the album, but the songs that were good FAR outweighed some of the weaker songs. Right out of the gate, ‘The Garden’ sets the tone for cool swinging rock with edge that sounded to me like Big Sugar for a new generation. While writing this post, I was trying to decide which song to feature, but came to the conclusion that I love so many songs that I’ll leave the band name and let people discover July Talk’s music on their own. The following video is for the song ‘Guns & Ammunition’, which was the then-mystery song that got me to fall in love with July Talk in the first place.